Issued in 1999, the Landfill Directive marked a decisive shift from landfill towards the EU's new waste hierarchy, which prioritises waste prevention, followed by re-use, recycling and recovery, and seeks to avoid landfilling wherever feasible.
The Landfill Directive set targets for progressively reducing the amount of biodegradable municipal waste landfilled in the period to 2016.
A decade on from the Landfill Directive's enactment seems a fitting time to review progress and extract key lessons for policy-makers in Europe and elsewhere. Through individual and comparative analyses of waste management in five countries and one sub-national region (Estonia, Finland, the Flemish Region of Belgium, Germany, Hungary and Italy), as well as an econometric analysis of the EU–25 Member States, this report seeks to answer a number of important questions, including:
To what extent was waste management practice changed in the last decade?
How much of the change was due to the Landfill Directive (and other EU instruments)?
What measures and institutional arrangements did countries introduce?
Which measures and arrangements proved most effective in different national and regional contexts?

The European Union appears to have met several objectives to reduce the impacts of air pollution, according to the original scientific understanding used to set the objectives. But when using the improved scientific understanding of air pollution now available, it becomes clear that emissions need to be even further reduced to protect health and the environment.